~ Roller Derby in Norway

Tag Archives: Lahti Roller Derby

This saturday, I experienced my very first live roller derby bout. The bout was Nidaros Roller Derby against the Bay City Rollers from Lahti,Finland. Nidaros won, the score being 206-71.

I was an NSO at the bout, so I was sadly waaay to busy to watch any derby being played, but just experiencing the feel and the mood from the audience and the music and everything was amazing. Being an NSO was great fun, though a little stressful. The position I ended up having was Penalty Wrangler, who’s job it is to basically run around between the refs and the penalty trackers, making sure every single penalty is written down. Since the volume in the venue was so loud, I had to be relatively close to the refs to be able to hear anything at all. Which means I had to run around a lot. I also yelled quite a bit, since you have to confirm that you heard the penalty, and then relay the information to the trackers. I must admit, I was pretty nervous the first few jams, and felt that I just didn’t hear anything. But I loosened up quickly, I felt myself improve, and I also got positive feedback after the bout from the head ref and the head NSO, which was great to hear!

Before the bout even started, I also took part in a demo of the rules, so that the audience would know what was going on. The average person does not know derby rules, and it’s much more fun being at a bout knowing what is going on. I was actually more nervous about the demo than the NSO’ing! The demo went okay I guess, though a little confusing. We were supposed to do one slow motion, halfway jam where they talked about the rules and stuff, and then another full jam where we played as well as we could. It ended up being just the first halfway jam, it was called off way to early because we thought we would do another, so the audience didn’t actually see any points being scored. Oh, well. Here’s a picture of us doing the demo:

Foto by: Erlend Lånke Solbu

Now I’m just waiting excitedly for the video of the bout to be posted, so I can actually watch the game. I have, though, seen some clips on facebook, and I did see a little on the bout. And I cannot for the life of me understand how I’m supposed to catch up to these amazingly talented people we have in our league. I’m extremely motivated to make the team someday, especially after experiencing this. But they have years of experience and I have months. I imagine myself playing along side them and just dragging the whole team down. But, a lot can happen if I work hard, and I think that I’ll learn loads if I just get up to scrimmage level. One little goal at a time!

Here’s a picture of everyone. The players, the refs, the NSO’s and even some stormtroopers and other awesome shit (they were security at the bout).Foto by: Oddvar Engvik